What does "unique" DNA have to do with shit?
Are identical twins less valuable because they don't have unique DNA?
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I was pointing out one of the criteria for identifying a distinct entity in biology, there are of course others. This answers the question of what makes a fetus separate from its parents, the sperm and the egg. What makes identical twins or clones distinct from each-other is the capacity for independent thought. (I have defended the pro-choice position in great depth before, including issues like conjoined / ingrown twins, chimeras, parahumans, etc - so we can skip the obvious.)
The question asked by this thread is what would be the legal difference between a fetus and a physically-autonomous (born) baby in a world where a fetus can be surgically extracted from the mother and kept alive independently of her, both physically and financially.
I believe that a (born) baby has both
a negative and a positive right to life (but not liberty or property until legal emancipation). The negative right to life is obvious: the killing of any human being, regardless of age, represents a tremendous competitive disadvantage to a society (evolutionary pragmatism's theory of human rights). The positive right to life is more controversial: do the parents have an obligation to take care of their child so that it at least doesn't starve or freeze to death? I believe there is a requirement for a positive "right to emancipation" - the parents can do pretty much whatever they wish, but they cannot kill, mentally incapacitate, or isolate the child that would make it impossible for him to sue for emancipation, or have someone else sue on his behalf. That, in my opinion, creates the obligation for the parents to at least announce publicly that their child will die unless someone helps them. Since there's an ever-growing over-abundance of people in this world who would be willing and able to keep a child from starving, depriving a child of those very basic needs is like depriving him of air through suffocation - that is murder.
None of this would currently apply to a fetus, because -- whether it has the right to life or not -- the fetus is nonetheless physically dependent on the body which it does not own. But what if new technologies changed that - what if saving the life of an unwanted fetus was nearly as manageable as saving the life of an unwanted baby after it is born?
[...] I dont see why the parents should have to be notified. It's none of there business. |
Yes, all medical decisions of their dependents are their business.
Human beings are born without the capacity to reason and act rationally - someone must take care of them until they can be expected to pull their own weight economically and take responsibility for their actions. This can happen upon reaching a certain default age (i.e. 18, presuming they aren't diagnosed with a serious-enough mental illness), or prematurely through a legal process.
If a pregnant girl can convince a jury that she is capable of being emancipated, or that her guardianship should be transferred to someone else, then her parents will no longer have a say. Until that happens, they are in control, and she has no rights except the two I've mentioned: the right to life and the right to emancipation. If her parents want to force her to pray to Allah five times a day, or to get married (even though this marriage would have to be validated or become null and void after her emancipation), or keep her from getting an abortion - that is their right as her parents.